Best WordPress Event Plugins With Seating Charts
Reserved seating is the requirement that ends most plugin shortlists in one question. Either the software can represent your actual room, with its raked circle, its restricted-view seats behind the pillar, and its wheelchair bays, or it cannot, and no amount of general capability substitutes. Theatres, cinemas, and seated dinners cannot compromise on this the way a conference can compromise on tracks.
Very few WordPress plugins do it, and the ones that do put it in a specific tier. This article covers what reserved seating genuinely requires, including the hold-during-checkout problem that decides whether two people can buy seat F12, and where each option sits.
Verified August 2026. Prices confirmed against vendor pages.
General admission versus reserved seating
General admission is a counter. Sell 200 tickets against a capacity of 200 and you are finished; where people sit is their problem. Every ticketing plugin does this, and if your venue is standing or unallocated, you do not need anything in this article.
Reserved seating is inventory management over a map. Each seat is a distinct sellable item with a location, a price band, and a state. The buyer must see which seats remain, choose specific ones, and hold them while they enter card details. That last requirement is the hard one, and it is invisible until two customers select F11 and F12 within the same thirty seconds.
The consequences run further than the plugin. Reserved seating changes your refund handling, since returning a seat means putting it back on the map rather than incrementing a number. It changes your door process, because the ticket must show a seat and your staff must be able to find it. And it changes your pricing, since a map with one price is usually a sign you are running general admission with extra steps.
The 6 options compared
1. Tickera Bundle
The best value for reserved seating on WordPress, because seating charts are one of the 25 premium add-ons included in the Bundle at $199 a year, renewing at $149, rather than a separate purchase. A lifetime licence is $399, and every plan covers unlimited sites with zero commission on ticket sales.
For a theatre or an arts venue, that lifetime licence is the standout number in this whole category. A 200-seat venue selling £15 tickets pays $399 once and keeps every pound thereafter, against a platform taking a percentage of each sale forever. Free mobile check-in apps come with the core plugin, which matters more with allocated seating because door staff need to see a seat number, and the Bundle’s custom forms handle the access requirements you should be collecting anyway. Nineteen payment gateways and PDF tickets round it out.
- Price: $199/yr Bundle including seating; $399 lifetime
- Seating: Included in the Bundle, not a separate purchase
- Best for: Theatres and venues wanting to buy once
- Watch out for: Seating is not in the $149 Standard tier
2. FooEvents Seating
Seating on WooCommerce, available within the bundles at Basic $169, Bookings $199, Premium $249 and Point of Sale $399 a year, licensed per domain and taking no per-ticket commission. Check which bundle includes seating for your configuration before buying, since the bundles differ in composition rather than only in size.
Its advantage is everything around the seat. Because tickets are WooCommerce products, price bands become variations, concessions become coupons, and a seat returned by a refund goes back into stock through machinery that already exists and that you can already reason about. The Point of Sale bundle at $399 is the one to consider for a venue with a box office, because selling an allocated seat at the door needs a live view of the map, and doing that on paper is how double-sold seats happen.
- Price: $169 to $399 a year, per domain
- Seating: On WooCommerce, with variations as price bands
- Best for: Venues with a box office and an existing store
- Watch out for: Confirm which bundle carries seating
3. The Events Calendar Elite
Custom seating maps sit in the Elite tier at $599 a year, above Essentials at $259 and Pro at $399. That is the most expensive route to reserved seating here by a considerable margin, and it buys the deepest surrounding ecosystem.
It makes sense for one specific organisation: a venue whose website is also its programme, with a busy calendar, multiple performances of the same production, venues and organisers as structured data, and email marketing in the same subscription. If you are already running Pro for the calendar, the step to Elite is $200 rather than $599, which reads very differently. If you only need a seat map, you are paying roughly three times the Tickera Bundle for it, and the honest recommendation is to look at the specialists first.
- Price: $599 a year for Elite, where seating maps live
- Seating: Custom maps within a mature events ecosystem
- Best for: Venues already on Pro with a large programme
- Watch out for: Three times the cost of the specialists
4. Seat reservation extensions for WooCommerce
A category rather than one product: standalone extensions that add a seat map to an existing WooCommerce store, typically sold as one-off marketplace purchases at modest prices rather than annual subscriptions.
The appeal is obvious for a venue already selling through Woo that wants seating without adopting a whole events platform. The caution is equally clear and worth stating plainly: this is the part of the market where maintenance is least predictable, and a seat map that stops working after a WooCommerce release is a serious problem three days before a run opens. Before buying, check the update history, look at how the developer responds to compatibility reports, and confirm the seat-holding behaviour during checkout works under concurrent load rather than in a demonstration. Where those checks pass, this is the cheapest route to reserved seating available.
- Price: Typically one-off marketplace purchases
- Seating: Adds a map to an existing WooCommerce store
- Best for: Woo stores wanting seating without a platform change
- Watch out for: Check update history and concurrency behaviour
5. Tables rather than seats
Free, and the correct model for most dinners, awards evenings, and fundraising galas, which are the events people most often go looking for seat maps to solve.
At a seated dinner nobody chooses seat 7 at table 4 from a map. A sponsor buys a table of ten, individuals buy places, and the organiser arranges the seating plan afterwards in a spreadsheet, because the arrangement depends on politics no software can model. So sell a table as a ticket type with a capacity of one and a price of ten places, sell individual seats as another type, collect names in a custom field, and produce the plan yourself. This uses ordinary ticketing you already have, handles the awkward requests, and avoids buying a seat map for a room whose layout changes with every event.
- Price: Free, using ticket types you already have
- Seating: Tables sold as units, plan drawn up afterwards
- Best for: Dinners, galas and awards evenings
- Watch out for: Manual plan; collect attendee names at checkout
6. A dedicated box office platform
The benchmark, and the right answer for a venue running a continuous programme. Purpose-built ticketing platforms handle seat maps, price bands, holds, subscriptions, season tickets, exchanges, and the reporting a venue manager actually needs, and they do it as their entire business.
The economics are the whole argument. Platforms typically charge a per-ticket fee, sometimes with a flat monthly option instead, which means a venue selling 10,000 tickets a year pays a great deal more than a $399 lifetime plugin licence. Against that: no maintenance, no compatibility anxiety, support on a Friday night, and features a plugin will not have. The decision usually comes down to volume and appetite. A venue with a technical person and 3,000 tickets a year should self-host; one with 30,000 tickets and a part-time administrator should not, and should treat the fees as staffing costs rather than software costs.
- Price: Per-ticket fees, or a flat monthly plan
- Seating: Purpose-built, with holds, exchanges and season tickets
- Best for: Venues with continuous programmes and high volume
- Watch out for: Fees scale forever; you do not own the data
Comparison table
| Option | Price | Seating tier | Sites | Commission |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tickera Bundle | $199/yr; $399 lifetime | Included in Bundle | Unlimited | Zero |
| FooEvents | $169 to $399/yr | Check bundle | Per domain | None |
| The Events Calendar | $599/yr Elite | Elite only | Tier-dependent | None from Pro |
| Woo seat extensions | One-off, varies | The whole product | Varies | None |
| Tables not seats | Free | Not applicable | Any | Depends on ticketing |
| Box office platform | Per ticket or monthly | Native | Not applicable | Yes, per ticket |
Holds, accessible seats and the map itself
Seat holding during checkout is the feature to test before anything else, and the test is specific: open two browsers, select the same seat in both, and proceed to payment in each. A correct implementation locks the seat for the first buyer with a visible countdown, commonly ten to fifteen minutes, and releases it if they abandon. An incorrect one lets both proceed and produces a customer service problem at the door.
Test the release too. A hold that never expires slowly removes your best seats from sale as people browse and leave, and by the third week of a run you are selling a half-empty house that shows as full.
Accessible seating deserves deliberate handling rather than a note in the description:
- Mark wheelchair spaces as distinct seat types, not as ordinary seats with a comment, so they are not sold to somebody who does not need them.
- Provide companion seats adjacent and link them, so booking a wheelchair space offers the seat beside it rather than leaving a wheelchair user next to a stranger.
- Offer a non-visual route to book. A seat map is a graphical interface, and a phone number or an accessible booking form is not a courtesy but the equivalent alternative your accessibility obligations expect.
- Mark restricted view honestly and price it accordingly. Selling a pillar seat at full price is the single most reliable source of complaints in a seated venue.
On building the map itself: draw it from the real room, not from a template. Count the seats in each row physically, note where rows are staggered, and mark the seats that do not exist because of a doorway. Then sell one performance to staff before you open to the public, and walk the auditorium checking that seat numbers on tickets match the numbers on the seats.
Related guides
Frequently asked questions
Do I actually need reserved seating?
Only if the seat matters to the buyer or to your pricing. Many small venues run unallocated seating happily and avoid the entire problem. If you sell different price bands by location, you need it.
Can two people buy the same seat?
They can if holding is not implemented properly, and this is the failure to test for. Two browsers, same seat, both to checkout. Do it before you go on sale, not after.
How do I handle a returned ticket?
The seat must return to the map, not just the refund to the customer. Confirm this happens automatically, since a manually released seat is a seat somebody forgets to release.
Can I hold seats back for press or comps?
Check for an admin hold facility. Every venue needs it, for press, for the director’s guests, and for the row you keep for latecomers, and doing it by blocking seats in the map is workable but fiddly.
What about several performances of the same show?
You want one map reused across dates with independent availability. Confirm that changing the map does not disturb performances already on sale, which is the awkward case.
Does a seat map work on a phone?
Test it, because most of your buyers are on one. A 400-seat map on a small screen needs pinch-zoom that works and touch targets large enough to select a single seat. This is where cheaper implementations fall down.
The verdict
For most venues: the Tickera Bundle at $199 a year, or $399 for life. Seating charts are included rather than sold separately, the licence covers unlimited sites, no commission is taken, and check-in apps come free.
If you run a box office: FooEvents Point of Sale at $399, so a seat sold at the door comes off the same live map as one sold online.
If you are already on The Events Calendar Pro: the step to Elite at $599 is $200 for seating maps inside an ecosystem you already run, which is a reasonable upgrade and a poor standalone purchase.
And if it is a dinner rather than a theatre, buy nothing. Sell tables as ticket types, collect names at checkout, and draw the plan in a spreadsheet. No seat map handles the politics of who sits next to whom, which is the actual problem at a gala.
